It was a chilly night outside the Smyrna Opera House last month, but inside, a group of students from around the state was bringing the poetic heat.
The occasion was the state finals for the Poetry Out Loud competition. At stake - a $200 prize for the winner and $500 for the winner’s school to buy poetry materials, plus a trip to Washington DC for the national finals and a shot at tens of thousands of dollars in prize money and stipends to the winner’s school.
For the eight state finalists on stage in Smyrna, the process started at their school. Briana Henry is the community engagement program officer at the Delaware Division of the Arts, which sponsors the competition.
“They go against other students, and the one student from the school then moves on to finals.,” she says. “And that's the state finals within Delaware, which we had on February 20th.”
Here’s how it works. Competition organizers put together an anthology of poems, and the students choose three to recite from memory. They’re judged on a variety of factors - stage presence, rhythm, and of course, delivery.
This is the 21st year of the competition in Delaware, and this year, there were a few complicating factors.
“Poetry Out Loud was a bit different because the Poetry Foundation stepped away from the National Endowment of Arts, which required the National Endowment of Arts to secure rights of over 100 poems,” Henry explains. “In the past, there were over 2,000 poems in the anthology.”
Further complicating the process was the choice to limit the poems to a relatively small group of works representing non-contemporary American poets, to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary.
Still, perseverance pays, the finalists hit the stage in Smyrna, and a winner was chosen.
“The champion for state finals this year was Natalia Gatti and she was from Sussex Academy of Arts and Sciences,” Henry says. “She was the first from that school,so that was exciting. Her first poem was ‘Militants to Certain Other Women’ by Katharine Rolston Fisher, ‘Let No Charitable Hope’ by Elinor Wylie, and ‘To a Young Dancing Girl’ by Elsa Gidlow.”
Beyond the prizes, the benefits to the students, whether they move on to the next stage or not, are important, the Division of the Arts’ Briana Henry says.
“They've always said that they felt a connection to be able to learn, recite with other poets, and the fact that they get to take this and practice on stage and perform in front of other people is something that builds their confidence and their public speaking,” she says.”
For Natalia Gatti, the competition is also a chance to pursue something she is especially passionate about.
“Poetry is freedom,” she said at the finals. “It is freedom of self, of expression, of love. And I believe that my poetry is my dignity. And I believe that without poetry, there is no life.”
Gatti heads to Washington DC for the national finals next month.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
